Do Avatars Make the Perfect Influencers?

Nineteen-year-old Miquela, with her blunt-cut bangs, light freckles, and penchant for messy double buns, has all the hallmarks of an Instagram influencer. There’s her cool factor (see the Brazilian-American Angeleno skateboarding), her music cred (her debut single, “Not Mine,” hit the viral chart on Spotify), her social activism (she supports Black Lives Matter), and her seriously good taste in fashion (think Proenza Schouler, Balmain, and Alexander Wang). She’s done photo shoots for V Magazine and Highsnobiety, and Prada enlisted her to help promote its fall 2018 show in Milan, where she wore the same bright orange coat Gigi Hadid had on. It wasn’t the first run-in for these two: Hadid tweeted at Miquela last fall, “Hey gurrrrl, you’re too major for comprehension.” Miquela has more than one million followers, and her Instagram feed is full of her chic friends; she’s eating pasta with Margaret Zhang in one snap, resting her head on Giovanna Battaglia Engelbert’s shoulder in another. And yes, she’s just like us, eye-rolling at the most mundane chores, like doing laundry or packing for a flight to New York.

Another Instagram star to watch is Shudu, a stunning, albeit newer, entrant to the space, with more than 100,000 followers. The "supermodel" (as per her bio) with close-cropped hair turned heads with her first posts last year, in which she posed nude with a stack of gold chokers around her neck. Last February, Shudu caught the eye of the beauty world when Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty line reposted a shot of Shudu with striking tangerine lips. It was a dream come true for the budding influencer, a seal of approval that certified her as the real deal.

Shudu isn’t real. And neither is Miquela.

Except, of course, that Shudu isn’t real. And neither is Miquela. Both are computer-generated avatars, part of a new force poised to change the fashion landscape. For fans, these “women” are a welcome new follow, so much more interesting than the cookie-cutter bloggers that have taken over en masse. Brands are on board, naturally, with this novel way to draw some attention in the otherwise crowded social media landscape. Plus, as clients, these avatars are easy: They’ll always look fantastic in the clothes and will never demand a front-row seat at a runway show.

Miquela and Shudu have the same DNA, if you will, but their similarities end there. Like any rising star, Miquela has a full PR machine to perpetuate and promote her elaborate ruse, which includes her own branded merchandise. High fashion has been happy to play along: Pat McGrath named her a muse, and Prada partnered with her to announce its set of GIFs, calling the CGI star a “mysterious cyber model.”

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Any wariness or sinister undertones surrounding Miquela were minimal back when I interviewed her via Google Hangouts in March. “I’m trying to finish two songs today,” she wrote. “And am hiding in the corner of the studio right now lmao.” When asked, point-blank, if she was a real person, she responded, “We’re chatting right now, aren’t we?!” She declined to say whether she had been paid for her partnerships (“Hmmmm, I need to call my manager lol”) and hinted that more of a reveal was possible. “Excited to share more of who I am,” she wrote. Her big outing would come in early April, when her account was hacked—by another avatar. The internet lost its collective mind as a Trump-loving, blond-haired, blue-eyed character calling herself Bermuda took the reins. Bermuda deleted Miquela’s more than 325 posts and put up six of her own, demanding that Miquela confess whether she was real or not. The hostile takeover ended a few hours after it began, as Bermuda returned the account to Miquela with a threat: “You have 48 hours to tell the world the truth or I’ll do it for you,” she captioned her final post.

Miquela’s posts were restored, complete with the existing likes and captions. “So, are we gonna act like a robot didn’t just take over another robot’s Instagram and expose this whole thing or nah?” one commenter wrote. Miquela came clean shortly thereafter: “I’m a robot. It just doesn’t sound right. I feel so human,” she wrote in a lengthy post.

The prolonged and dizzying stunt, worthy of a sci-fi film, revealed both Miquela and Bermuda’s creators to be Brud, an L.A.-based artificial-intelligence start-up founded by the thirtysomething DJ/recording artist/producer Trevor McFedries. The company concocted the entire dramatic, hype-building episode to garner attention. It worked: Miquela gained enough followers the day of the “hacking” to push her over the one million mark. And Brud made headlines the following week for raising a rumored $6 million from Silicon Valley investors. (Even for avatars, there’s no such thing as bad press.) But the net effect, what the fashion world is so eager to get a piece of, was a ton of attention.

Shudu, on the other hand, sparked a different kind of conversation— followers truly believed she was human, and the media dubbed her the “world’s first digital supermodel.” She is, in fact, an art project, the work of a young British photographer named Cameron- James Wilson. He dreamed her up last year almost by accident, with no particular agenda or grasp of the potential result. The 28-year-old was on the hunt for a hobby, a creative outlet, something to inspire him after moving back home. He first tried his hand at repainting Barbie dolls, joining a small but enthusiastic group of collectors, but found it “too fiddly.”

A self-proclaimed geek who enjoys sci-fi films and gaming, Wilson turned to a pair of 3-D programs to design clothing and a muse. Inspired by a Barbie called Princess of South Africa, Shudu was born. She is remarkably realistic, a testament to the decade Wilson spent professionally retouching images. In the first picture of Shudu posted to her Instagram account, she is seated against a glowing yellow backdrop, leaning to one side while staring directly at the viewer. “Everyone was asking, ‘Who is this girl? Who is she?’ ” Wilson says. The intensity caught Wilson off guard, even more so when the enthusiasm turned to anger. The accusations grew hostile, suggesting Wilson was hiding or refusing to give credit to a real model. And yet the questions swirling around Shudu were contributing to her popularity. He decided to watch it play out, neither confirming nor denying who, or what, she was.

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The demands of creating a computer- generated model are immense. Unlike with typical photo shoots, where input comes from the stylist, the set designer, and even the glam team, every detail in an avatar must be crafted by the artist. “I don’t really know what to do with Shudu a lot of the time,” Wilson confesses.

Which is to say he welcomed a suggestion by his teenage sister to give Shudu the Fenty treatment, using and tagging products from Rihanna’s popular beauty line. It was a tipping point for Wilson and his muse. When people believed Shudu to be real, Wilson decided to come forward.

The backlash toward a white man creating a black woman was swift, with accusations of exploitation. One professor claimed he’d committed “racial plagiarism.” Wilson has not made any money from Shudu, he says, nor is he looking to take work away from actual models. Shudu is a celebration of diversity in an industry that badly needs it, he asserts.

It takes three working days for Wilson to create an image of Shudu, which adds up to two weeks of brainstorming and 8 to 10 hours at the computer. It’s a timetable not unlike that of many fashion campaigns or editorial spreads. But the qualities Wilson spent years removing as a retoucher, like facial peach fuzz, he now laboriously adds in. “Shudu has given me much more appreciation for our natural imperfections,” he says.

These fully digital creations, with purposeful “flaws”—from a fight between friends to peach fuzz—speak to, ironically, our desire for authenticity. While human influencers “are real people trying to perpetuate some kind of fantasy,” Wilson says, Shudu “is a fantasy figure trying to break through to reality.”

But perhaps the future of social media isn’t about what’s real and what’s fake, but about what we “like.” After all, crusades against Photoshop happen alongside rampant usage of filtering and Facetuning. We want it all—the fantasy and the facts—and the most successful influencers exist somewhere in between.

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